44 die but mother and children spared as Russia jet crashes in fog

Fireball: wreckage from the RusAir Tu-134 burns on the road outside Petrozavodsk today. Air officials said runway lights had failed as the plane came in to land

Forty-four people were killed when a passenger jet crashed in thick fog and burst into flames on a road in Russia.

A mother, her nine-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter were among eight survivors. The family are in a critical condition in hospital.

The Tupolev Tu-134 flying from Moscow to Petrozavodsk, came down shortly before midnight near a village. No casualties were reported on the ground. The plane, belonging to airline RusAir, had been just about to land.

Petrozavodsk is in Karelia province near the Finnish border, about 400 miles north of Moscow.

Alexei Morozov, deputy head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said the runway's high-intensity lighting for poor-visibility conditions failed just as the plane was on its final approach.

Airport chief Alexei Kuzmitsky said that according to preliminary information, the plane clipped a power line, cutting off the runway lights. Air traffic controller Sergei Shmatkov told how he tried to abort the landing when the lights went off, but it was too late.

TV channel Rossia-24 broadcast phone footage of the plane burning on the road. Charred fragments were strewn around the carriageway, less than half a mile short of the runway. Landing gear jutted out of the ground. The plane was carrying 43 passengers and nine crew. Victims included a Swede, a Dutchman and four people with US-Russian citizenship. Among the dead was Russian premier league football referee Vladimir Pettay.

Today prime minister Vladimir Putin was due at the Paris Air Show to support Russian firms. In recent years, former Soviet republics have had some of the world's worst air safety records, blamed on age of aircraft, weak regulation, poor training and cost-cutting.

The Tu-134 has been a workhorse of Russian aviation since the Sixties. The model that crashed was built in 1980 but RusAir said it was in good working order. Test pilot Magomed Tolboyev said the Tu-134 was reliable and human error was the most likely cause.